The more I read the post from the States, the more I salivate.
Yeah, I really miss the days I was in the States, there're sure lots of odds and ends that can be picked up in a lot of weird places.
But in Asia, there's no such place !
Or perhaps, I am just well-informed.
So, to Asians - or those who have previously lived in Asia, - is there any place in Asia - from China to Korea to the Phillipines to Singapore to Thailand to Malaysia to Japan to India, I go places, you see - that has places WELL STOCKED with weird pieces of odds and ends ?
Hope there's some place I can be happy as a clam again, in Asia.
Independent Game Developers are developers of softwares.
And the term "softwares" does include things like MOVIES, MUSIC, WEB CONTENTS, ONLINE BOOKS, and, yes, computer softwares.
We all know how powerful is the Hollywood behemoths, right ?
But if we pay enough attention, we will see that there are still a large group of movie producers who prefer to work OUTSIDE of Hollywood's control and/or influences.
They are known as "independents".
Yes, the game industry is very competitive right now. The lifespans of game titles are in usually weeks, not months or years, like it used to.
But hey, in the world of movies, lifespan are in weeks too, and there is no lack of independent producers/directors keep churning out movies according to their own liking.
Yep, most of the products suck. But once in a while, we do have some real gems.
As the world of the movies never count out the "indies", we, in the software world shouldn't count out our own "indies" too.
It's the indies who work in garages or basements who often come out with ingenious notion of how things are done.
In the gaming world, we have largely two genre of games - Shoot-em-ups and race-and-flips.
Well... methinks its time for some new ways to entice players to get involve in REAL gameplay.
And perhaps this time, it'd be the indies who'd come up with it.
How to convert the uuencode into real file ?
on
GPS Jamming for $50
·
· Score: 1
Can anyone tells me how to convert the uuencoded ascii data into real file ?
Can I do a "cut and paste" thing, and then use some sort of conversion utility and it'd output the file ?
Actually, you can do the gear-shifting-the-wireless-way NOW.
For example, the so-called "gear-box", - the one the drivers use, to shift gears, - of newer models of Toyota, are actually nothing more than oversize joy-stick.
If you can rig the thing - that is, take out the "gear-box", - and then hook up the wires underneath to some Wi-Fi thingies, you can actually shift gears by remote control !
In the future, assassination will not be done by bullets or poison arrows or bombs. Rather, it can be done by WI-FI controlled gear-shift, which, when done correctly, can actually make a car FLY out of control.
Imagine a car going 100MPH or faster on the autobahn, on fifth gear, and then suddenly the gear shifts to reverse.
If that car doesn't fly, it at least FLIPS.
Think of the passenger(s) inside the car.
It's a perfect way to assassinate someone without even a smoking gun.
You sez:
"Humor can co-exist with professionalism. However, source code is not
where you put it. If you ever release that code to a customer, it
could damage your company's reputation."
I am NOT disputing your finding.
However, I wish to get your attention to a very tiny piece of embedded code inside Intel's chip, the "EIEIO" register.
So far, I do NOT see Intel's reputation being damaged in any form. On the contrary, the programmers, yes, who are also CUSTOMERS, seems to enjoy it.
You see, the ability to laugh at yourself, or be humorous is a plus.
I sincerely hope that this new gadget will help me.
You see, many, many moons ago, when I still have my hair, I used the IBM PS/2.
One day, I bought a batch of SINGLE-SIDED 3.5" floppy, and formatted them in the PS/2 floppy drive.
Instead of formatting the SINGLE-SIDED floppy diskettes as SINGLE-SIDED, the PS/2 machine formatted them as DOUBLE-SIDED.
Now, the "still-have-full-head-of-hear" younger me didn't really care, and proceeded to store data on those diskettes.
Okay... let's go several years in the future.
I wanted to get the data off those floppy disks, and was horrified to find that the disks were SINGLE-SIDED disks. And of course, ALL the non-PS/2 floppy drives refused to recognize those disks as DOUBLE-SIDED, and thus, I can't retrieve the data I stored on the disks.
I did try to find old PS/2, hoping that I can retrieve the data from the disks. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any.
So the disks languished, along with the data.
Has anyone used the gadget ? Can anyone tell me if that gadget can turn any plain-vanilla 3.5" floppy drive into PS/2 floppy drive that treat single-sided disks as double sided ?
I sincerely hope that this new gadget will help me.
You see, many, many moons ago, when I still have my hair, I used the IBM PS/2.
One day, I bought a batch of SINGLE-SIDED 3.5" floppy, and formatted them in the PS/2 floppy drive.
Instead of formatting the SINGLE-SIDED floppy diskettes as SINGLE-SIDED, the PS/2 machine formatted them as DOUBLE-SIDED.
Now, the "still-have-full-head-of-hear" younger me didn't really care, and proceeded to store data on those diskettes.
Okay... let's go several years in the future.
I wanted to get the data off those floppy disks, and was horrified to find that the disks were SINGLE-SIDED disks. And of course, ALL the non-PS/2 floppy drives refused to recognize those disks as DOUBLE-SIDED, and thus, I can't retrieve the data I stored on the disks.
I did try to find old PS/2, hoping that I can retrieve the data from the disks. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any.
So the disks languished, along with the data.
Has anyone used the gadget ? Can anyone tell me if that gadget can turn any plain-vanilla 3.5" floppy drive into PS/2 floppy drive that treat single-sided disks as double sided ?
"But it's not like India doesn't have a middle class."
"From the posts here you'd think everyone's either a pauper
or a millionaire; there are millions of Indians for
whom $200 USD would be an investment, but a doable one."
In my original message, I said that _most_ of the Indians in India can't afford the USD 200, because it'd be a hell of a lot of money for them.
Then you come in and declared that the "millions of middle class people in India can afford the USD 200"
Oh, by the way, what's the total population of India ? Mere millions or OVER A BILLION ?
You see, the "millions of middle class people in India" that you mentioned, in the sea of BILLIONS OF IMPOVERISHED people, is but a drop in the bucket !
In other words, MOST OF THE INDIAN PEOPLE IN INDIA CAN NOT AFFORD THE SIMPUTER, it's as simple as that.
Your message's title "IT doesn't replace education" is indeed very striking, considering that the government of Malaysia - a fifth-rate country, mind you - is on the path of REPLACING education with IT.
Specifically, the Prime Minister of Malaysia has commented on several accounts that,
"The teachers are mere facilitators. The main point
is the computers, where the students learn from. The
teachers just _help_ out if any problem arises."
Dunno what will happen to the children in fifth rate countries such as Malaysia.
USD 200 might sounds peanuts to many. But in India, it's a hell lot for the majority of Indians.
Simputer is a good concept, but with RP 9000 price tag, I think it'll only benefit (again!) the Rich, the Powerful and the Corrupted, in India, of course.
Can anyone here offer any suggestion as to how to lower the cost ?
Methinks if not because of the announcement by the "Chinese Space Agency" that they are going to the moon by 2010 (perhaps as early as 2008) and establish a moonbase there, with a longer-term plan of having a base on Mars by 2040, perhaps we won't even hear any "new ideas" from NASA.
First of all, I doubt that the robot runs on Windows. Even Windows CE is too bloated for the bot.
But even if the bot runs on Windows (even full-bloan WinXP), I bet the nice and witty people from the OSS camp can do an even cooler toy that runs on OSS platform - Linux or *BSD, among others.
If you live nearby the Seagate HD factory, like I used to, you'd know many people who worked in the plant, like I do.
And talking with people from the plant, you'd hear many "stories". Mainly about QC, or rather, the lack of.
For quite sometime now, I've quitely been waiting for this "cut the warranty period" bomb to drop, for I know that it's suicidal for _anyone_ to provide a 5 Year warranty for products that are SO LOUSILY MADE.
The return rate for all those dead drives must've been really high, and costly, or the HD firms won't do such a stunt which must've cost them tons of BAD PUBLICITY.
If you gotta talk about "Goldmine", then the pot-of-gold ought to be located with those who can provide softwares which are immuned to virus attack, or at the least, can CONTAIN the damage done by virii to a minimum.
To this, may I suggest the various flavors of Unices - from Solaris to *BSD to Linux ?
If you think that charging for security is a new practice, please think again.
Car makers like Ford, GM, Lexus, BMW, SAAB, and so on, routinely charge their customers for SECURITY, in the name of "add-ons" - like anti-lock-brakes, air-bags, front-side-collision-protection, et cetera.
I am not here to argue on behalf of Microsoft.
I am here just to point out that we, as consumers, have routinely been milked for inferior and/or defective product, and then, been fleeced again for the so-called "added protection devices".
How many of us have pay taxes to the government ?
And then, how many of us have to pay _again_ to install "security devices" in our houses, or hire security guards, or getting "security firms" to "watch over" our own residential and business premises ?
Ain't one of the basic tenet for us, the tax payers, in paying our tax, the authority (government) in return will hire police and all the other "security apparatus" to safeguard our safety ?
But then why are we paying MORE MONEY to protect ourselves ?
The fact is simple - all of us have been programmed to think that it's okay to PAY EXTRA for security, because we have forgotten that the so-called "SECURITY FACTOR" should have been BUILT-IN in the products that we bought, or paid for, in the first place.
The Indian government is indeed a progressive one.
Compare to China, the Indian makes rocket 12 times cheaper. China, on the other hand, is still boasting to the world how "cheap" and "reliable" their rockets are.
Unlike China, the Indian government is brave enough to officially embrace Open Source. China, on the other hand, has largely abandoned their "open source push" due to Bill Gates intervention (allowing the use of pirated copies of MS-Windows and MS-Office on PRC government computers).
Slashdot Mirror
The more I read the post from the States, the more I salivate.
Yeah, I really miss the days I was in the States, there're sure lots of odds and ends that can be picked up in a lot of weird places.
But in Asia, there's no such place !
Or perhaps, I am just well-informed.
So, to Asians - or those who have previously lived in Asia, - is there any place in Asia - from China to Korea to the Phillipines to Singapore to Thailand to Malaysia to Japan to India, I go places, you see - that has places WELL STOCKED with weird pieces of odds and ends ?
Hope there's some place I can be happy as a clam again, in Asia.
You sez:
"Linux isnt going to be truely Desktop friendly
until X11 gets replaced with something that
doesnt completely suck."
For a much less-suck thingy, try enlightenment 0.17. Website at http://www.enlightenment.org
You sez:
"2.5.54 is far slicker on the desktop than 2.4.x
I don't blame ya.
With 2.4.x kinda die a s-l-o-w death, due to the super-sluggish-performance by that ultra-non-slick-maintainer
You sez:
"Non-profit does sound like a good idea."
We happen to have two examples to choose from -
1. www.debian.org
2. www.stampede.org
The former is working rather smoothly, albeit a little bit too bureacratic.
The latter
I hope that whoever "takeover" the Mandrake operation will make it even stronger than Debian.
Independent Game Developers are developers of softwares.
And the term "softwares" does include things like MOVIES, MUSIC, WEB CONTENTS, ONLINE BOOKS, and, yes, computer softwares.
We all know how powerful is the Hollywood behemoths, right ?
But if we pay enough attention, we will see that there are still a large group of movie producers who prefer to work OUTSIDE of Hollywood's control and/or influences.
They are known as "independents".
Yes, the game industry is very competitive right now. The lifespans of game titles are in usually weeks, not months or years, like it used to.
But hey, in the world of movies, lifespan are in weeks too, and there is no lack of independent producers/directors keep churning out movies according to their own liking.
Yep, most of the products suck. But once in a while, we do have some real gems.
As the world of the movies never count out the "indies", we, in the software world shouldn't count out our own "indies" too.
It's the indies who work in garages or basements who often come out with ingenious notion of how things are done.
In the gaming world, we have largely two genre of games - Shoot-em-ups and race-and-flips.
Well
And perhaps this time, it'd be the indies who'd come up with it.
Can anyone tells me how to convert the uuencoded ascii data into real file ?
Can I do a "cut and paste" thing, and then use some sort of conversion utility and it'd output the file ?
Where to get such neat utilities ?
Thanks in advance !
Actually, you can do the gear-shifting-the-wireless-way NOW.
For example, the so-called "gear-box", - the one the drivers use, to shift gears, - of newer models of Toyota, are actually nothing more than oversize joy-stick.
If you can rig the thing - that is, take out the "gear-box", - and then hook up the wires underneath to some Wi-Fi thingies, you can actually shift gears by remote control !
In the future, assassination will not be done by bullets or poison arrows or bombs. Rather, it can be done by WI-FI controlled gear-shift, which, when done correctly, can actually make a car FLY out of control.
Imagine a car going 100MPH or faster on the autobahn, on fifth gear, and then suddenly the gear shifts to reverse.
If that car doesn't fly, it at least FLIPS.
Think of the passenger(s) inside the car.
It's a perfect way to assassinate someone without even a smoking gun.
Think about that.
You sez:
"Humor can co-exist with professionalism. However, source code is not
where you put it. If you ever release that code to a customer, it
could damage your company's reputation."
I am NOT disputing your finding.
However, I wish to get your attention to a very tiny piece of embedded code inside Intel's chip, the "EIEIO" register.
So far, I do NOT see Intel's reputation being damaged in any form. On the contrary, the programmers, yes, who are also CUSTOMERS, seems to enjoy it.
You see, the ability to laugh at yourself, or be humorous is a plus.
It distincts ourselves from drones.
So now that I have the perfect excuse on crashing my car
Insurance adjuster: "Why you crash your car again?"
Me: "While I was _listening_ to my favorite webpage
a guerilla type of webpage suddenly popped-up,
that scared the beejeezzusse outta me !"
Are you kidding, since whence will
No,
We maybe, a little bit too excited, however.
As an ordinary member (?) of ICANN, I am sad to say that ICANN has officially voted itself out of any relevance !
ICANN was started as an organization representing the Net users. Now, it has become just another word that meant nothing.
I sincerely hope that this new gadget will help me.
You see, many, many moons ago, when I still have my hair, I used the IBM PS/2.
One day, I bought a batch of SINGLE-SIDED 3.5" floppy, and formatted them in the PS/2 floppy drive.
Instead of formatting the SINGLE-SIDED floppy diskettes as SINGLE-SIDED, the PS/2 machine formatted them as DOUBLE-SIDED.
Now, the "still-have-full-head-of-hear" younger me didn't really care, and proceeded to store data on those diskettes.
Okay
I wanted to get the data off those floppy disks, and was horrified to find that the disks were SINGLE-SIDED disks. And of course, ALL the non-PS/2 floppy drives refused to recognize those disks as DOUBLE-SIDED, and thus, I can't retrieve the data I stored on the disks.
I did try to find old PS/2, hoping that I can retrieve the data from the disks. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any.
So the disks languished, along with the data.
Has anyone used the gadget ? Can anyone tell me if that gadget can turn any plain-vanilla 3.5" floppy drive into PS/2 floppy drive that treat single-sided disks as double sided ?
I'd appreciate any help that you can render.
Thanks again !
I sincerely hope that this new gadget will help me.
You see, many, many moons ago, when I still have my hair, I used the IBM PS/2.
One day, I bought a batch of SINGLE-SIDED 3.5" floppy, and formatted them in the PS/2 floppy drive.
Instead of formatting the SINGLE-SIDED floppy diskettes as SINGLE-SIDED, the PS/2 machine formatted them as DOUBLE-SIDED.
Now, the "still-have-full-head-of-hear" younger me didn't really care, and proceeded to store data on those diskettes.
Okay
I wanted to get the data off those floppy disks, and was horrified to find that the disks were SINGLE-SIDED disks. And of course, ALL the non-PS/2 floppy drives refused to recognize those disks as DOUBLE-SIDED, and thus, I can't retrieve the data I stored on the disks.
I did try to find old PS/2, hoping that I can retrieve the data from the disks. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any.
So the disks languished, along with the data.
Has anyone used the gadget ? Can anyone tell me if that gadget can turn any plain-vanilla 3.5" floppy drive into PS/2 floppy drive that treat single-sided disks as double sided ?
Thanks for any help that you can give me.
Thanks again !
You sez:
"Secondly, I was objecting to the way people were implying that "most" meant "almost all"
Whoa ! Hold on for just a second.
Let's go back a little bit, shall we ?
Now, please tell me what's the meaning of the word "MOST".
Does it mean "More than 50%", or as you wanna put it "a sizeable portion" ?
I used the word "MOST" in my original message and I mean just that, MOST - More Than 50% - and nothing else.
Never had I meant it to be "almost all", no sirreeee.
You sez:
"But it's not like India doesn't have a middle class."
"From the posts here you'd think everyone's either a pauper
or a millionaire; there are millions of Indians for
whom $200 USD would be an investment, but a doable one."
In my original message, I said that _most_ of the Indians in India can't afford the USD 200, because it'd be a hell of a lot of money for them.
Then you come in and declared that the "millions of middle class people in India can afford the USD 200"
Oh, by the way, what's the total population of India ? Mere millions or OVER A BILLION ?
You see, the "millions of middle class people in India" that you mentioned, in the sea of BILLIONS OF IMPOVERISHED people, is but a drop in the bucket !
In other words, MOST OF THE INDIAN PEOPLE IN INDIA CAN NOT AFFORD THE SIMPUTER, it's as simple as that.
Your message's title "IT doesn't replace education" is indeed very striking, considering that the government of Malaysia - a fifth-rate country, mind you - is on the path of REPLACING education with IT.
Specifically, the Prime Minister of Malaysia has commented on several accounts that,
"The teachers are mere facilitators. The main point
is the computers, where the students learn from. The
teachers just _help_ out if any problem arises."
Dunno what will happen to the children in fifth rate countries such as Malaysia.
Yeah, they could go ogg vorbis indeed.
But that begat another question -
Is there any Ogg Vorbis firmware available ?!
USD 200 might sounds peanuts to many. But in India, it's a hell lot for the majority of Indians.
Simputer is a good concept, but with RP 9000 price tag, I think it'll only benefit (again!) the Rich, the Powerful and the Corrupted, in India, of course.
Can anyone here offer any suggestion as to how to lower the cost ?
Thanks in advance !
Methinks if not because of the announcement by the "Chinese Space Agency" that they are going to the moon by 2010 (perhaps as early as 2008) and establish a moonbase there, with a longer-term plan of having a base on Mars by 2040, perhaps we won't even hear any "new ideas" from NASA.
Competition is indeed good !
First of all, I doubt that the robot runs on Windows. Even Windows CE is too bloated for the bot.
But even if the bot runs on Windows (even full-bloan WinXP), I bet the nice and witty people from the OSS camp can do an even cooler toy that runs on OSS platform - Linux or *BSD, among others.
If you live nearby the Seagate HD factory, like I used to, you'd know many people who worked in the plant, like I do.
And talking with people from the plant, you'd hear many "stories". Mainly about QC, or rather, the lack of.
For quite sometime now, I've quitely been waiting for this "cut the warranty period" bomb to drop, for I know that it's suicidal for _anyone_ to provide a 5 Year warranty for products that are SO LOUSILY MADE.
The return rate for all those dead drives must've been really high, and costly, or the HD firms won't do such a stunt which must've cost them tons of BAD PUBLICITY.
If you gotta talk about "Goldmine", then the pot-of-gold ought to be located with those who can provide softwares which are immuned to virus attack, or at the least, can CONTAIN the damage done by virii to a minimum.
To this, may I suggest the various flavors of Unices - from Solaris to *BSD to Linux ?
If you think that charging for security is a new practice, please think again.
Car makers like Ford, GM, Lexus, BMW, SAAB, and so on, routinely charge their customers for SECURITY, in the name of "add-ons" - like anti-lock-brakes, air-bags, front-side-collision-protection, et cetera.
I am not here to argue on behalf of Microsoft.
I am here just to point out that we, as consumers, have routinely been milked for inferior and/or defective product, and then, been fleeced again for the so-called "added protection devices".
How many of us have pay taxes to the government ?
And then, how many of us have to pay _again_ to install "security devices" in our houses, or hire security guards, or getting "security firms" to "watch over" our own residential and business premises ?
Ain't one of the basic tenet for us, the tax payers, in paying our tax, the authority (government) in return will hire police and all the other "security apparatus" to safeguard our safety ?
But then why are we paying MORE MONEY to protect ourselves ?
The fact is simple - all of us have been programmed to think that it's okay to PAY EXTRA for security, because we have forgotten that the so-called "SECURITY FACTOR" should have been BUILT-IN in the products that we bought, or paid for, in the first place.
Sorry for this digression.
Someone ought to start doing back-trace and see how that trojan horse get inserted in the package.
This "insert trojan horse" practice is becoming serious now. First it was OpenSSH, now it's Sendmail.
If we are not careful enough, next time we may see distros coming up with trojan horses all over the place.
Just like a chain will only be as strong as its weakest link, security will only be as good as where it breaks down.
Back-tracing is a must, in situation like this !
The Indian government is indeed a progressive one.
Compare to China, the Indian makes rocket 12 times cheaper. China, on the other hand, is still boasting to the world how "cheap" and "reliable" their rockets are.
Unlike China, the Indian government is brave enough to officially embrace Open Source. China, on the other hand, has largely abandoned their "open source push" due to Bill Gates intervention (allowing the use of pirated copies of MS-Windows and MS-Office on PRC government computers).
The future belongs to India. Not China.